Contents

Synopsis

An old adversary targets the Ice Kingdom and Marceline has to save Simon.

Plot

The episode begins with the Ice King dreaming about Lemongrab. The Empress appears at the Ice King's bed. She is surprised that he does not recognize her, indicating that the two have a past. She then hypnotizes him and he becomes obedient to her.

She asks for blood, and he brings her penguins. The Empress refuses and asks for humans, and the Ice King says the only human left is Finn. She commands the Ice King to bring her the blood of Finn.

The Empress spends her time reading the Ice King's diary. Apparently, she has made him become her personal slave, doing ridiculous things to satisfy her needs.

The scene changes to Jake guarding Bubblegum’s cabin, where the Princess is inventing a machine to freeze vampires. Finn appears wearing bandoliers equipped with stakes. Jake then accidentally stakes Bubblegum’s "outside clock," because he thought he heard a twig snap. Finn then takes over, a bit frustrated at Jake for the clock. As he sits, Ice King watches him from a tree, singing a little chant and snapping branches.

The scene then changes back to the Ice Castle, where as the Empress reads, Marceline sneaks up behind her, just about to stake her, when the Ice King comes in, carrying Finn. Marceline, surprised, blows her cover, runs to the Ice King to check for if he had been bitten by The Empress.

The Empress, a bit annoyed, orders Ice King to capture Marceline and Finn, who had made an attempt to stake her, but failed.

As the Ice King searches for the two, Marceline blurts out that the reason she hunted vampires was because of him. He's surprised, and Marceline sings a poetic song as an explanation.

She recalls when she was lonely in her teenage years, without Simon, she mistakes a bearded human for him, but realizes it is an ordinary human and his family. Marceline sees a vampire about to attack the family and kills the vampire, expecting a thank you, instead, she scares the family away. When she staked a vampire, she felt as if she was protecting Simon.

The Ice King then begins to cry, and Marceline and Finn step out of their hiding place, thinking that Simon was starting to remember. But instead, he laughs when the two come close enough, and shackles Finn and Marceline. The Empress then makes herself visible, ordering the Ice King to kill Marceline but he refuses. While The Empress and the Ice King argue, Finn and Marceline escape and use the Ice King’s powers to imprison The Empress in ice.

The Empress tries to hypnotize the Ice King further, only to realize that the Ice King is "too thick" to be hypnotized. The true reason he was serving her was because he is obsessed with women.

The Empress reveals that the Ice King used to serve her before, while he was still partly human. The Empress said he used to have a “silver fox thing going on”. Marceline attacks The Empress, but she is overtaken. Bubblegum appears and stuns The Empress with the machine she had been working on, allowing Marceline to stake The Empress and suck her soul.

Marceline absorbs The Empress’ power. She then agrees to stake the rest of the vampires with her friends.

Major Characters

Minor Characters

Mentioned

Songs

Trivia

It is revealed that at some point after abandoning Marceline, Simon became the Empress' thrall.

Though wholly willing to kill Finn to satiate the Empress's demands, the Ice King outright refused to kill Marceline. Despite being 'too thick' to be controlled by the Empress, he is entirely able to consciously set aside both his mania and his search for a princess to avoid harming Marceline. This suggests that in addition to Simon Petrikov's attachment to Betty Grof, his attachment to Marceline partially survives the degeneration of his identity by the crown.

In Marceline's flashback, she is shown wearing a unicorn t-shirt, this might be a reference to Daniel, a talking unicorn that Marceline befriended as mentioned in the scrapbook. Daniel was killed by the vampires, which motivated Marceline to hunt them all down.